Baby names from 1880 to 2024

An animation and interview with Hannah Emery

A few weeks ago I posted Baby Names for 2024 (5/13/2025), which caught the attention of Hannah Emery of Janus Name Journeys. Hannah is a sociologist and fiction writer who also works as a professional name consultant. After speaking with her, I created the two animated bar charts to explore how naming has changed over the years. I asked Hannah a few questions to get her expert thoughts on these graphs. She generously responded to them below, but before you read her insights, look at the animations and see what catches your attention (expand to full screen for a better view).

The data comes from the Social Security Administration. The animation was created as a GIF with R (code here) and converted online to MP4. Data used in the R code is available here (top 30 names for each year).

After you enjoy reading the interview below, don’t forget to check out Hannah’s site, Janus Name Journeys.

(Tom) Hannah, before we get to the data, why did you decide to study baby names for your dissertation, and how did you get into the baby-naming business?

(Hannah) I’ve been interested in names since I was a kid; I’ve always made lists and collected books on naming. But I kind of fell into writing about names by accident. When I was studying sociology at UC Berkeley, one of my faculty mentors was a young guy with kids, and he and I got into a conversation one afternoon about how he and his wife were disappointed that their youngest child’s name was suddenly flying up the popularity charts. I started talking about the informal research I’d already done on names, how the most popular names were getting less popular over time, and how names connected with gender and race and class, and after a few minutes he just kinda looked at me with one eyebrow raised and asked if I’d picked a dissertation topic yet.

The name consulting stuff came later. I was 30 when I finished grad school, didn’t have my own kids yet, but some of my friends were starting to have kids, and because they knew I’d been researching names and naming, they would come to me looking for advice. After I had my own first child and met more expectant parents, I realized that many parents felt overwhelmed by the process of choosing their child’s name and thought there might be a market for me to help people narrow their options. I tend to refer to myself as a compass; I don’t choose the names for people, I just help them find the right path.

(T) The graphs show that the top names were stable for decades, which I find interesting. For example, John was the top male name from 1880 to 1924 and was still a top 5 name through the 1980s. Meanwhile, Mary was the top female name from 1880 to 1946. Thereafter, top names didn’t last as long. What’s going on here?

(H) The best explanation I’ve seen for the shift in the rate of name change over time comes from Stanley Lieberson’s book A Matter of Taste: he’s got a whole chapter analyzing how and why names became a fashion and how this shift happened across the whole Western world at pretty much the same time (the early 20^th century). He suggests that the shift from naming as a product of custom to a product of fashion and trends coincided with general modernization; twentieth-century parents were more likely to be removed from their extended family, from traditional religion, and from other aspects of “the old ways of doing things.” He talks at some length about how the 20^th century was really the first time there was a widespread idea that something’s being “old” meant it was bad. There also started to be a lot more cultural emphasis on the importance of the individual around the same time, so the idea that your name was something that marked you as unique vs. something that tied you to your family and community became more widespread.

(T) The dots on the graphs represent the average percent usage of names in each rank. The top female’s name has a 4% mean use, while the top male name has about a 4.5% usage over time. As you watch the graphs' rankings go from above average usage to below average usage. Why are popular names less popular today?

(H) That’s my dissertation topic! I think that’s a complex question that probably has a few different answers. Lieberson’s work pretty effectively disproved the idea that the shift to names-as-fashion was caused by radio or movies or TV—in other words, that initial shift wasn’t a reflection of the advent of “media culture.” But I do think that over the course of the 20^th and early 21^st centuries, our culture has continued pushing further and further toward the importance of individualism. I’ve spoken to many contemporary parents who are very concerned that their child be “Googleable” or have a name that stands out on a resume (in fact, I wrote a whole post about that phenomenon a few weeks ago!). And when I spoke to dozens of families for my dissertation, everyone I talked to—regardless of class background, education level, or ethnicity—wanted a “Goldilocks name,” something that was unique without being “weird.”

I also suspect that cultural factors probably have something to do with it. A hundred years ago, the United States was much more culturally homogeneous; it was clearly majority-Christian and majority-white, and people from marginalized backgrounds felt a lot of pressure to assimilate that was modeled in name choices. That’s just not the case anymore. If you look at the top names in my home state of California, two of the top five boys’ names and one of the top five girls’ names are clearly Spanish-language-derived (Mateo, Santiago, and Camila). Mississippi has Amir and Kehlani, very African-American-coded names, in its top 20 most popular names. Another post in my name popularity series talks about this, too: that the names that are popular in your particular social circle—whether you’re Black, white, Latine, immigrant, or US-born; have a high school education or a graduate education—are probably going to look much more like each other than they do like the big list of names that are popular at your regional or state level or the national level.

(T) As you look at these graphs, what connections do you see between the data and what you know culturally about baby naming?

(H) Your graphs are really good at showing the large-scale trends—the way that names cycle up and down the charts, even the most popular ones (John and Robert were Top 10 names for over 100 years; in 2024 they ranked #21 and #90, respectively). Something that’s a little harder to see is the way in which the names shift. Another point that Lieberson makes in his book is that fashion doesn’t typically change quickly; the names that are going to take off are the ones that are different, but just a little bit different.

One of the quintessential examples of this is the Jennifer/Jessica transition that happened (Jennifer was #1 from 1970 to 1984, and then Jessica took over). They’re both 3-syllable names, they share some core sounds, but they’re also different enough that Jessica caught parents’ ears in the early 70s as something new and fresh. Ashley, another name that shot to the top of the charts in the mid-80s, started its rise ten years earlier when the names at the top included Michelle and Kimberly, when Shannon and Kelly were top 25 names, and something that combined these sounds would’ve struck parents as “just different enough.”

(T) Using the dots as a reference. One striking difference between female and male names is that the top spot means are 4% vs. 4.5% for females and males. Yet, if you go to the second most popular name, it is 2.5% vs. 4%. For females, the drop-off from the top name to the second most popular name is noticeable and different than for males. Overall, the top female names aren’t used as much as the top male names. Why?

To put it simply, girls’ names have been treated as fashion items for much longer than boys’ names. For a long time, most boys got family names, and boys’ names—or, really, men’s names—were seen as being bound by a lot more rules around respectability. Women’s names could be sparkly and pretty and subject to the whims of fashion, but men would eventually have to command respect in the workplace. People didn’t experiment with their sons’ names in the same way as they did their daughters’. A lot of contemporary parents still think it’s harder to choose a boy’s name or like there are fewer valid choices for boys’ names. Some of this may be due to the fact that boys’ names tend not to cross ethnic boundaries as neatly. A name like Sophia (#6 in 2024) can—maybe with a minor spelling change—be English, Slavic, Italian, or Spanish; Mateo, #7, is much more definitely Latine-coded.

In fact, though, there’s been a shift in boys’ names in the last few decades. Until the 1970s, the top 5 male names changed very little (in 1970, they’d been in the top 5 an average of 73.8 years); by 1981, that average had dropped to 33.2 years, and in 2024 it was 28.4 years. Both boys’ and girls’ names started to cycle in and out of fashion more quickly in the early 80s, and if the boys’ list didn’t show a tendency to consistently cycle in either William or James as one of the top 5 names (one or the other—or sometimes both—has been the “classic” name on the list alongside Liam and Noah for over a decade now), that average would drop even lower.

(T) If I make these graphs again in 10-20 years, what do you expect to see and why?

(H) I wouldn’t be surprised to see that the rate of churn had increased again, that names were staying at the top of the charts for a shorter time. The percentage of births covered by the top names also seems likely to continue to shrink.

In terms of names that are likely to be popular in ten years, I’d look at sounds that are popular among the top names right now. Long vowels are very popular for both boys’ and girls’ names; boys’ names ending in vowels are also definitely having a moment. Girls’ names are getting longer, three and four syllables, with lots of “-lee” and “-ana.” If I look at names that are in the ranked-100-to-200 zone right now that share some of those qualities, I’d keep an eye on Arthur and Archer, which might follow trendsetting Asher to the top of the charts; I also think that Judah and Jonah might be the next Noah, and Milo might be on track to follow in Liam’s footsteps. For the girls, I think Cecilia and Genevieve are likely to have a moment soon, and that with Olivia and Oliver both at the top of the charts, Olive is going to start climbing fast.

(T) What final thoughts do you have for us about baby names?

(H) I think looking at the trends of what’s popular, how fast names are going up and down, and differences across region or class or ethnicity or gender can be a huge amount of fun and shed some insight into different groups’ assumptions about their own identities and their kids’. I also increasingly think that the pressure modern parents feel to avoid the most popular names is just as manufactured as any other style-driven pressure. Once a name’s been worn by your child—or your new coworker, or your friend—for more than a couple weeks, in most cases, it’ll just be their name, and you won’t think about its uniqueness or style or sameness. So if you’re choosing a name for someone, choose the one you love and trust that the rest will work itself out.

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I am a tenured mathematics professor at Ithaca College (PhD in Math: Stochastic Processes, MS in Applied Statistics, MS in Math, BS in Math, BS in Exercise Science), and I consider myself an accidental academic (opinions are my own). I'm a gardener, drummer, rower, runner, inline skater, 46er, and R user. I’ve written the textbooks “R for College Mathematics and Statistics” and “Applied Calculus with R.” I welcome any collaborations.